She liked to think about him
when it was raining.
She could not say why then
nor when it began exactly. It was probably one of a series of the
same, endless October days. It did not matter. The important thing
was that at the sound of the first drops hitting dully on the roofs
her face brightened up and she felt strangely calm. She could look
for hours at this spectacle of water and sometimes light, and it
brought her an inspiration she could not find anywhere else. Only
when it was raining, and somewhere in the forefront of her mind she
kept a fresh memory of M, could she create. Letters, words,
sentences flowed from her fingers as if she was reporting a live
event.
Hyped
up, she would call then M, who was actually waiting for a phone call
from her. He was listening with a ghost of a smile on his lips, what
idea she came up with that time. She was not describing him in detail
the motifs, characters or places –
she was focusing more on the images she saw through the eyes of the
imagination, on the colors, the sounds.
It always amazed him when he
was reading N's stories, how many minor references, comparisons,
nuances he would have missed if he had not had an earlier
conversation with her. In some way he would have looked at the story
in the same way, but he would not have noticed that one thing N
wanted to convey.
She used to tell him that in
order for him to get the right meaning he should learn to read again.
He never knew what N meant at such times, but if he had a chance, he
would at least once like to see a string of words she wrote in the
way she did it. Would he be able then to see the place where the lame
dancer hid her dreams? Or the face of a man who died, not being able
to save the world?
N, wrapped in a blanket, was
sitting on the floor with a cup of tea in her hands. She was staring
at the overcast sky behind the balcony door. The black as the onyx
clouds were gliding across it.
The storm was coming.
She was about to reach for a
pen lying on the pile of blank pages next to her, but she refrained
at the last moment. She took a sip of her favourite raspberry tea and
leaned her head against the wall. Even when she heard the first drops
striking against the roof, she did not start writing. It thundered
several times. With half-closed eyes, she was looking out for
lightning.
"I wonder what M is
doing now," she whispered, barely audible. A thought crossed
through her mind to go for a phone and call M, but the whole body
seemed suddenly so heavy that in the end she stayed in her place. She
was not restless, but strangely tired and sleepy. It flashed a few
times outside. No idea came to N's head.
She was afraid of that day.
A day when in the rain she will think of M, and on paper no word will
remain. Her lips trembled. She put down a cup of undrunk tea and laid
her head on the knees of drawn up legs, staring at the drops slowly
dripping down the window.
In one of her first stories,
she wrote: "Even if I was born in another country, spoke a
different language, liked other things, I would fall in love with the
same person again." She did not want to admit it even to
herself, but those were her own thoughts. She would fall in love with
M again.
Tears involuntarily ran down
N's face. She was wiping them at first, mad at herself, but after a
moment she let go and let them flow. Like raindrops on the
windowpane. She barely could see anything - everything turned into
colorful spots similar to those she used to describe to M. It's she
who should learn how to write again, not he how to read. She hid
herself behind series of sentences, instead of letting them express
herself.
During the rain, the
blueness of the sky hides behind a curtain of dark clouds. Maybe
that's why she liked so much to create then? So that no one would be
able to make out her feelings?
She wiped her eyes with the
back of her hand. On the skin, there remained smudged mascara.
A strong wind swayed the
treetops. The puddles were getting bigger every second, and the hail
started to fall. Chunks of ice hit the roof as if they wanted to
puncture it.
N, despite these sounds,
fell into a restless sleep.
After the storm, there
remained broken branches and large puddles. And also blank white
sheets of paper of which she could not take her eyes off.
On the spur of the moment,
she stood up, though her whole body ached. She grabbed the phone from
a desk and made a call.
"Hello?" she heard
a sleepy M's voice.
"I didn't write
anything," she said barely audibly, as if she were afraid that
because of these three words she would be punished.
"It's nothing wrong I
guess?" he asked. N was silent. Thousands of conflicting
thoughts crossed her mind. At first she wanted to protest somehow,
but she realized that he had no idea how much it meant to her.
He
did not know that she was writing in the rain, thinking about him.
It's nothing wrong I
guess? M's voice
buzzed in her head. She looked out the window at the unusual blue sky
and, marveling at herself, replied stoically:
"Yes, you are right.
I'm sorry I'm bothering you."
She said goodbye immediately
and hung up. She put the phone back on the desk, took a cup of
undrunk tea to the kitchen. She collected the blank sheets of paper,
aligned them and put in a drawer.
A few days later she met
with M.
"So you're not going to
write anything more?"
N shook her head, smiling
slightly.
"It is a pity," he
said. "Because, you know, recently I was able to see the face of
a man who died, not being able to save the world.
N laughed.
"How did it look?"
"Terrible," he
replied, and laughed too. There was an awkward silence.
"And if I were born in
another country..." he suddenly began to speak. N's heart
skipped a beat for a moment. Although she was looking at M, she could
not hear his voice. Nevertheless, she knew what he was saying.
And when he looked at her,
she could swear that she saw in his eyes a reflection of the calm
blue sky.
